fwiw, the main reason why I don't want this in xinput is that anything
sysfs related (or elsewhere) is platform specific. On BSD the Device
Node isn't an evdev node and other efforts are required. xinput is an X tool
itself and I don't want non-X functionality in it because you'll quickly
unleash pandora's box here about stuffing custom features in that only apply
to a tiny fraction of setups.

even the case where you have more than one device with the same name is
quite unusal (note: we do support a "pointer:" and "keyboard:" prefix for
those where a device has a pointer and a keyboard device with the same
name like many of the mouse/keyboard combos do).

> > But other than that there isn't anything in X to fix. xinput is primarily a
> > debugging tool and it does name resolution for convenience. But it's not a
> > tool for complex configurations. It does exactly what it needs to do, if you
>
> OK, I do not believe that this information was conveyed clearly enough.
> Apparently some setups use it for real configuration.

yeah. I've been saying "get your DE to implement support" for 7-8 years
now but saying things and being listened too are two different entities :)
xinput's main problem is that it works for the majority of use-cases, so
people use it. That's largely fine for most cases, but not when it comes to
anything even remotely sophisticated.